Controversial US philosopher who sought to understand and explain the science of the mind
Daniel Dennett, who has died aged 82, was a controversial philosopher whose writing on consciousness, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and evolutionary psychology helped shift Anglo-American philosophy from its focus on language and concepts towards a coalition with science.
His naturalistic account of consciousness, purged as far as possible of first-person agency and qualitative experience, has been popular outside academia and hotly opposed by many within it.
